Friday, July 27, 2012

Google Rolls Out 1 Gbps Fiber - 5 Mbps service for free!

Google announced yesterday their 1 Gbps fiber roll out to Kansas City, MO and Kansas City, KS. Residents are encouraged to pre-register for the service and rally their neighborhoods to action. Pre-registration costs $10 and at the end of the September 9th registration period, the neighborhoods with the highest participation will be rolled out first. Nice. I wished I lived there.
The most surprising bit of news to me was that the lowest tier of service, 5 Mbps is free! Now, the catch is that the free service comes with a $300 installation fee, which is waived for the other tiers. Either way, it's sure nice to see some innovation in the broadband space.

From the Google Fiber blog:

The rally lasts for six weeks and ends on September 9. When you participate, not only will you help bring Google Fiber to your home, you’ll also help bring it to your community—if your fiberhood reaches its pre-registration goal, we’ll also connect community buildings like schools, libraries and hospitals with free Gigabit Internet.

Maybe now there will finally be some competition instead of the few incumbents we have now in most markets. Any company with the slogan of "don't be evil" is a company that I would like to buy Internet service from.